


What Seasons Mean

by TalysAlankil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7141961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalysAlankil/pseuds/TalysAlankil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Cell, the lonely boy from Wizard's Cove, each season had a distinct feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Seasons Mean

**Author's Note:**

> @pied-piper-pluto made a prompt to draw/write about a character in each of the four seasons. And I'm trying to motivate myself to work on my novel, so here's a prequel piece about one of the protagonists of said novel. Hope you enjoy it!

Ever since Cell had been ten years old—almost eleven—winter had always been a time of mourning.

It had been before that in their household, but Cell had been too young to notice the way his mother quieted when the end of fall came. And even if he had, it would be a few more years before Anna told him the story of her friend who was executed as a child. Too young to die, Anna had said. Too young to know pain, he had added, and the way Anna had quieted let him know she realized they had both experienced loss at the same age.

On Cell's tenth birthday, his mother had a present for him that he had never dared to ask for: she was carrying a child. A sibling for Cell—someone for Cell to care for, someone who might relieve his loneliness. Anna had always been a bit of an outsider in Wizard's Cove, having come back to her childhood village after years on the road, with Cell as a baby. The small village operated in generations who all grew up together, had children at the same time, raised them together, on and on in an endless cycle that Anna had broken. There was no children in Wizard's Cove that was around Cell's age, no one for him to play with, and Cell had inherited his mother's status as an outcast.

Anna still managed trades from her remote home, but whenever Cell suggested they just leave Wizard's Cove together, she refused. She did not want to uproot him, or so she said. So they remained there, and Cell was alone. Not exactly unhappy—his mother loved him and made sure to provide for him—but with something missing nonetheless.

Now she was pregnant, and a few months later, in the heat of summer, his baby brother Lio was born. Then fall had come, and Lio had fallen ill, his baby tears filling their home. Cell helped his mother every way he could, but this was not something that could be helped with.

They had enlisted all the help Anna had been able to find, including the retired physicist George who lived in Wizard's Cove and was supposed to be a genius. All their efforts only delayed the inevitable, and Lio passed away before he could live in the cold of winter.

Ever since then, winter had been a time of sorrow for Cell, heralded by the end of fall and his mother's memories, and followed by his own. Maybe it hurt so much because Lio had represented hope for Cell, or maybe it hurt because it _should_ hurt. Maybe it was both.

* * *

Spring was a time of excitement for Cell as a child, bringing around his birthday and Anna's presents. When he grew into his teens, past Lio's death, it was harder to feel excited about something as trivial. That was without counting on George.

After he had tried his best for Lio and failed, George had stayed in contact with Cell's mother. He had become the first person who felt like a family friend to Cell: they visited the old man and his bodyguard Aidan, they visited back, they bantered with Anna and got to know Cell. Aidan played with Cell when Anna could not, George asked him what he liked or told him stories from his past that Cell was never fully convinced were real.

Spring came, and Cell's birthday was near, when George told Anna that his daughter would be coming over for a few days along for her own daughter's birthday, just a few days before Cell's. Cora was excited to see her grandfather, but George wondered if Cell would like to come over so there would be someone her age around. In exchange, he had said with a shrewd smile, he was sure he could convince his daughter to stay a few more days, so Cora would be around for Cell's birthday too.

Cell had begged his mother to let him come—as if Anna would ever refuse it—and that was how, a few days short of turning eleven, Cell's excitement about his birthday finally came. Overdue, and all the bigger for it.

He met Cora, brash and fierce, smiling and kind, and he saw a reflection of himself in her. They were not entirely identical—Cora could not stand the quiet like Cell did, as he soon realized—but she awoke Cell's positivity from where Lio had buried it, and he could never resent her from that. She had a brother too, Adam, who was a year older than Cora and Cell were, and she had not lost him—but he had not come to Wizard's Cove either. He was stuck in their home of Aquila, having been enrolled in the prestigious Academy, where taking such a break would be impossible. Cora did not sound angry at her brother—her words made Cell hope they would get to meet someday—but she was sad that he and her father could not be here for her. He could relate to that hole in her chest, even if her circumstances were less tragic than his.

Cora had restored part of what made Cell who he was—or maybe he was just healing and Cora had been another step in that process. But thanks to her, spring was a time of excitement again—spring, and every other time she visited her grandfather.

* * *

Summer had magnified young Cell's loneliness. The youths of Wizard's Cove—just a few years older and younger than him—were out in the streets, or down at the beach, and Cell could only watch them from afar.

But with his family suddenly enlarged, that had changed. Late spring had shown another side of George than the eccentric scholar, as he'd shown Anna and Cell the private cove he owned by the shore. It was surrounded by a natural rock formation, isolating the beach there from most of the shore, and there, George swam, climbed the cliffside, or performed whatever other form of exercise he could come up with.

He had brought Anna and Cell there, assuring them they could use the beach at their convenience. Anna had been unable to stay—her business calling her away, as it sometimes did now that she had someone she trusted with Cell's care—and Cell had ended up with Aidan, playing on the beach for a while.

Then Aidan had suggested they head into the water to cool off, and Cell had been forced to confess he had never learned to swim. It was one of those rare things about his loneliness Cell was embarrassed about—he lived so close to the sea, but he had never dared go to the beach with Anna to teach him, and had had no friends to do so. Aidan had knelt by him on the sand, smiled kindly, and asked, "Do you want to learn?"

Fear and excitement battled it out in Cell, but the latter quickly won out. So he stripped off his shirt and pants, and followed Aidan to the waterfront. They paused there so Aidan could show him the movements, then, when he judged Cell ready, they went into the water. 

It was intimidating and overwhelming: the cool water against his sun-warmed skin; the pull of the waves on his legs, threatening to make Cell fall; the sense that he was going to be swallowed up when a wave reached higher than the others. But he followed Aidan, and practiced the movements he had just learned where the water was still shallow enough to stand in it, until Aidan was satisfied.

When he was, all he told Cell was not to get too far out at sea. He glanced at the cuff of his sleeve then, where a tear had been sowed with golden thread, and smiled, before urging Cell on. He would be right behind Cell, he promised.

Swimming was only the first thing he learned that summer—and the summers after that. It had been lonely once, but now it was a time when Cell shared in George's athletic pastimes, and Aidan's insights.

* * *

Fall was a time for family. Or, specifically, a time for Cell to share with his mother.

There was no particular reason for that, but it had always been. Even after George and Aidan came into their lives, fall left Cell alone with Anna as business tended to call George away. George left often, but fall was the time he left the longest, spending months in another residence in Iuliae to the north. Why he would go further north for the cold season, Cell had no idea. Admittedly, he knew fairly little about George's business, since he was supposed to be retired.

So they holed up at home, preparing for winter and for the autumnal holidays—the Sailing Feast and the Eagle Festival, one month apart from each other near the end of the season. A time for cheer and merriment, or just to quietly share some peace.

Until Cell was sixteen, met a boy he had heard of for five years, and his mother was taken from him, on the very first day of fall. Until he was uprooted, as Anna had tried to shield him from so often.

That taint would soon leave in Cell's memory, but that year would change the meaning of fall for Cell forever. The Eagle Festival would always be a tether back to Anna and his home, but fall would forever be the season he fell in love—and the Sailing Feast would always be tied to the boy whose birthday fell on the same day.

But that is another story.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that "other story" is definitely meant to be my novel itself. No, I'm not going to spoil it.


End file.
